a deep sense of angst... a deep sense of hope

In case you haven't heard the Lee/Lipscomb (not Iker as I mistakenly said yesterday) meeting came to an end today with the following statement.

[ENS] The following statement was issued this morning on the Anglican Communion News Service:

A group of bishops met in New York on 11-13 September at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury and in consultation with the Presiding Bishop to review the current landscape of the church in view of conflicts within the Episcopal Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury had received a request from seven dioceses for alternative primatial pastoral care and asked that American bishops address the question. The co-conveners of the meeting were Bishops Peter James Lee of Virginia and John Lipscomb of Southwest Florida. Other participating bishops were Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishops Jack Iker of Fort Worth, Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, James Stanton of Dallas, Edward Salmon of South Carolina, Mark Sisk of New York, Dorsey Henderson of Upper South Carolina, and Robert O'Neill of Colorado. Also participating was Canon Kenneth Kearon, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.

We had honest and frank conversations that confronted the depth of the conflicts that we face. We recognized the need to provide sufficient space, but were unable to come to common agreement on the way forward. We could not come to consensus on a common plan to move forward to meet the needs of the dioceses that issued the appeal for Alternate Primatial Oversight. The level of openness and charity in this conference allow us to pledge to hold one another in prayer and to work together until we have reached the solution God holds out for us.

This communiqe is quite foreboding to me in that it points to the degree to which the bonds of affection have been breached. This statement says, for the first-time, out loud that this is not merely an issue about human sexuality, this fracture runs much, much deeper. But for its final line it appears as though nothing is going to make this better. And yet, it seems to me that ++Williams doesn't quite get that.

It's a positive sign that these difficult conversations have been taking place in a frank and honest way. There is clearly a process at work and although it hasn't yet come to fruition, the openness and charity in which views are being shared and options discussed are nevertheless signs of hope for the future. Our prayers continue.

Those who have figured it out, including those were participants in the meeting, are making statements and blogging left and right (no pun intended). Basically there all saying, its over. This makes me sad. This makes me think that the final fence is about to be built and sides (which I've fought taking) are about to finally be taken. Now I realize some of these folk have been doomsday preachers since the beginning, but for the first time their doomsday reality seems to jive with my sense of the tenor and direction of the conversation.

We must continue to hold one another in prayer. We must continue to seek a way forward. We must remove ourselves from the bumper sticker theology world we live in and return to a place of grace, a place of accountability, and a place of hope. C'mon, what do you say... Let's quit letting other people throw hand grenades at each other and work this out together, on the ground floor. After all, we're functionally congregationalist anyway.